Monthly Archives: August 2009

Have you ever wondered whether you can have more than 3 colours with conditional formatting. I don’t know about Excel 2007 but certainly in Excel 2003 the limit of 3 conditionals can at times be too restrictive. So is there any way of getting more than 3 colours? Yes! Continuing on the theme of the… Read More »

I was asked yesterday if there was a way to populate a worksheet with formulae as the user (third party) was adding data. This would stop the need for the worksheet to be pre-populated with formulae or require the user to add the formulae – especially if there were a data input clerk only. So… Read More »

Well Sean, here a solution to the first of your problems :-). I’ll explain the code (although you can just use the spreadsheet attached at the end of this article). For those not familiar with this, Sean has a simple problem, in that while entering part numbers for OLE equipment in on worksheet he wish… Read More »

I thought that this time I would give you something useful for a change, so while implementing a simple custom menu we’ll create a wizard that provides an auto save feature for the IDE. With this second chapter I’m changing tact and instead of screen shots I’ll include the source code (syntax highlighted). This means… Read More »

It occurred to me after I had written the previous article that I didn’t explain to those who don’t know, how to write the VBA function – so there’s the solution. First you need to open the Visual Basic Editor by either selecting it from the menu (Tools | Macros | Visual Basic Editor) or… Read More »

I was asked today if Excel through the use of standard formulae could determine if the first character of another referenced cell was an alphabeta character. The first thought I had was to see if Excel had any native formulae (RegEx) for doing this, but no. My second thought was to test the cell using… Read More »

After trying for 5 days to get a 3G connection (having had 1 bar for 2 minutes) I’ve given up and phoned T-Mobile to cancel the contract. Funnily enough the person I spoke to on the phone said that she could see that I didn’t have any 3G service in my area and the person… Read More »

I thought that I would write out a list of topics that I can cover, although there isn’t necessarily any meaning in the order of this list. So here’s the list: IDE Menus (including shortcuts); Useful Open Tools Utility functions; Reading editor code; Writing editor code; Syntax Highlighters; Editor Notifiers; Keyboard bindings; Dockable forms; Project… Read More »

Before You Start Think about your audience Before you start, its a good idea to think a little about the management of the project files. Although you may think that you’ll build this add-in for you current version of the IDE, if you up grade and require backward compatibility (or choose to distribute your add-in)… Read More »

Having come home from work on the wrong train and ending up in Coventry I thought I would try the mobile broadband again. There are 3G networks available from all the other major competitors but no T-Mobile network. I’ll keep trying until Sunday evening and if the situation hasn’t changed I’ll cancel the thing 🙁… Read More »